Have 'They' Totally Lost It?

by Mark Reynolds

DANGER, DANGER . . . felonious doodlers are in our midst! DIAL 911! Call in the HOMELAND SECURITY SWAT TEAMS! I need to feel PROTECTED. Ban all pencils and paper! We can’t have this in our society. A society with PENCILS is a DANGEROUS society!    

I was just treated to a picture and blurb at SF Gate about two boys, ages 9 and 10, who were hauled out of their classroom by the brave men (or women) in blue who work for the Ocala Police department in handcuffs for the heinous crime of “doodling.” It wasn’t the ordinary doodle, though. It was a felonious doodle. These boys had depicted themselves as stabbing another boy in class in their doodle as well as hanging him. I guess next time they might just as well stab him or hang him as doodle since it usually is a felony to do those acts too.

Boy am I glad I wasn’t arrested for all my doodles in school. I am sure I had a few bullies in mind when I drew tanks running them over. Or the ones I had drawn of the jets strafing the school yard as a wacko teacher I had was portrayed as running from them.  And I grew up “all right.” I never did become a mad, midnight mass doodler. I guess I should be careful, though. I might be arrested for violation of an ex post facto law against felonious doodling in your past. Who knows, as the SWAT team kicks down my door at 3:00 a.m. , H&K MP5’s at the ready to blow any doodling resisters into the next life as they tear my house apart looking for evidence of doodling. I guess I am in trouble since I do own a few pencils and some paper.  They would be able to take away my “rights,” you know. Felons, especially felonious doodlers, won’t be able to ever have the “right” to defend themselves with a firearm. Have you noticed how EVERYTHING is becoming a felony? Why do you suppose? It is because “they” say felons can’t own firearms. It is back door gun control.  

Personally, I do believe that “we” have gone over the edge. To subject a couple of young boys to an arrest for a felony, dragging them out of their 4^th grade class in handcuffs, has got to take the cake. Meanwhile, back at the plantation, the plantation manager George Bush is planning to blow up a few REAL people with REAL bombs in Iran . Never mind the fact that his frightened, trigger-happy mercenary soldiers have been having a really good time making sure children are orphaned in Iraq.  

I think those two boys should actually be taken out and trained to be stormtroopers for the Empire. They should be rewarded with a scholarship to Annapolis or one of the other Military schools. Why not start them young?  Issue them a case of pencils and all the paper they can doodle on. Surely this would be necessary to apply the trade to properly draw out battle plans on a table showing towns and cities being blown to smithereens by some general. I can’t imagine that they are all such good artists as they draw out their plans that it doesn’t really look like fancy doodling.  

Maybe we could start a mass doodling rebellion. All felonious doodlers could march on Washington , bringing their pencils and papers and waving them in the face of the masked riot police with the rubber bullets, pepper spray, machine guns and Tasers. Speaking of Tasers . . . whoooa . . . Why didn’t the Ocala Police TASER those little creeps? That would have taught them! A good 50,000 volts into their decrepit little bodies. We’ll teach those guys to doodle.  

Maybe they better look closely at the “victim” of the doodlers. Maybe he is the real culprit. Possibly beating them up or stealing their lunch money so that they would have the audacity of penciling out a plan of punishment for their adversary. Naaa . . . it wouldn’t make sense to look at the victim. After all, he is the victim.  

I can also look at it like this. When we HAD freedom of speech and expression, folks had a way to vent. Sort of like the barking dog versus the quiet one. The quiet one is the one who will bite you on the butt. To let these guys vent their hostilities on a piece of paper may be better than having them get so pissed off at someone that they pull a Columbine reenactment to the detriment of everyone else. Maybe being able to vent your anger by saying to someone I’m going to kick your ass is better than kicking the guy’s ass. But no . . . now we have new laws on the books called “terroristic threatening.” And that is nothing but a muzzle on free speech. Personally, I have always been the kind of person who is like the quiet dog. I’ve always had a bit of a problem with the “turn your other cheek” concept. I mean, what do you do if they hit the other cheek?  

Well enough of this rambling . . . .